His Dark Lady (51 page)

His face was grim as he turned back to her. ‘It is the worst of
news,
Your Majesty. Sir Philip Sidney is dead from the wound he received last month at the battle of Zutphen.’

Elizabeth stared. ‘Pip?’ she faltered. ‘What, dead so young? And his wife heavy with child?’

‘It is a tragedy, both for England and for those of us who loved him dearly,’ Burghley agreed sombrely. He glanced down at the letter. ‘His brother was with him at the end, and Lady Sidney too, the poor gentlewoman. Lord Leicester is sending her back to England once her strength has returned, for he fears she may give birth prematurely after this shock. No doubt Lady Sidney will return to her father’s house for her lying-in, which cannot be far off. This will be a hard blow indeed for Walsingham. He always embraced Philip as the son he never had.’

‘I pray his grandson may be born safely, then,’ Elizabeth said, and turned away to hide her tears.

Lord Burghley dismissed the messenger, then handed her back the letter once the door had closed behind the man. ‘I am sorry to disturb you further in your distress over this news, Your Majesty. But you will see from his letter that Lord Leicester asks to return to England at once. As we suspected, the campaign has not gone well this year. He says he has supported the rebels in their fight against the Spanish, as our treaty with the Dutch demanded, but the numbers are against them. And the conditions worsen daily as the rains continue. His lordship claims the English troops will not survive another winter out there.’

‘He asks to withdraw?’ She was aghast, scanning the letter with only half her attention on its contents. Robert’s handwriting was so familiar, the loops and slants were darts that pierced her heart. She held the parchment against her chest and closed her eyes, inhaling. This had been written hundreds of miles away on a battlefield in a foreign land, yet she fancied she could catch Robert’s scent on it, that musky tang of leather and horses that always seemed to surround him.

And now dear sweet Pip was dead. A wound taken in battle last month that had festered and refused to heal. She read the letter again more carefully. Brave and impatient to be in battle again, the young man had not taken as much care with the wound as he should have done. After a few weeks, gangrene had set in and killed him.

Her body ached with the knowledge that she would never again see Sir Philip Sidney’s handsome face at court, nor watch him dance so elegantly that his feet seemed to fly across the floor, nor hear his delightful, intelligent poetry recited in the evenings to the gentle plucking of a lute string.

But Robert was still alive. Alive and asking to be allowed to return to England, she reminded herself.

If she denied him, would his death be the next bad news to arrive from Utrecht?

She could not stand to lose Robert. The very thought of his death wrenched at her heart. It would be a loss like none other she had ever suffered.

Elizabeth signalled Helena to stand apart from them. She murmured to Lord Burghley, ‘How bad is it out there, do you think? Can we afford to withdraw our troops? I do not wish England to look weak.’

‘It is a matter for the Privy Council, Your Majesty.’

‘Yes, yes,’ she said impatiently, then pursed her lips. ‘I will write to Robert myself tonight. The messenger is to be given clean clothes and a bed, and a speedy passage back to the Lowlands tomorrow. Robert must come home as soon as possible and carry Sir Philip Sidney’s body with him. Let the ship be draped in mourning cloth and have black sails. There will be a state funeral for the poor boy, with a marble tomb and mourners lining the streets. He was one of our most glorious young English noblemen and deserves to be remembered as such. You and Robert can see to the arrangements between you.’

Lord Burghley stiffened, but bowed. She knew he would wait and try to beat her down on the expense later, when her feelings were less inflamed. For now it salved her guilty conscience to think of her dearest Pip coming home wrapped in cloth-of-gold and under guard, to be laid like a young prince in a marble tomb at St Paul’s Cathedral.

‘Your Majesty,’ he ventured, ‘should you not wait for the Council to decide what is to be done before writing to Lord Leicester?’

‘The Privy Council may decide whatever they wish,’ Elizabeth replied coldly, and strode to the door, Helena hurrying behind to snatch up the extravagantly laced and beaded train of her gown. ‘If
this
wasteful death of our most shining youth tells us anything, it is that life is short and we must not squander a moment of what has been granted to us by the grace of God Almighty.’ She turned in the doorway, and caught him frowning. ‘Oh, away with that long face, Cecil. You may deliberate on the campaign all you wish with the other councillors. But I have been without my right hand too long. I am the Queen, and I will have Robert back at my side before Christmas.’

Four

SOMEWHERE IN THE
dark, jumbled maze of smallholdings clustered against the city walls, a cock began to crow. A few moments later, another joined it. Light had begun to glimmer behind the shutters half an hour before, but Lucy had not moved, lying there with an arm over her eyes, trying not to keep dwelling on the people whose faces she missed most here in Aldgate: Will Shakespeare, her dear friend Cathy, and Master Goodluck.

The church bell tolled the hour and Jack Parker stirred beside her, half propped up on pillows. The light was stronger now, and there could be no pretending that the day had not begun in earnest. A fat black spider dropped from the roof beams on to the coverlet and began to scrabble hurriedly across the weave. Jack stared at the spider for a moment, his eyes bleary with sleep, then brushed it to the floor.

‘Tell me it’s not dawn yet,’ he mumbled, and wiped drool from his mouth. ‘My head! I don’t remember coming to bed last night. I wasn’t alone at the Swan though, I’m sure of it. Who did I bring home?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lucy replied tersely, and swung her legs out of bed, desperate to relieve herself.

She knew her insensitive young husband would not leave the room while she performed this necessary function, so she contented herself with squatting over the chamber pot behind a latticed screen. When she had finished, she came out and found him out of his
nightshirt
but not yet dressed, bent over the washbowl with nothing on. His nudity was not a sight she had grown used to yet, nor did she wish to. Carefully, Lucy averted her eyes. It was strange to live in such intimacy with a man who never so much as looked at her breasts. But true to Will’s promise, Jack Parker was oblivious to her as a woman. His reasons for marrying her did seem to be the opportunity for a reconciliation with his parents – and the generous dowry handed to him by Walsingham himself on the night of their wedding.

Squeezing into her workaday gown and apron – and finding both increasingly hard to fasten as her girth swelled ever broader – Lucy hurried down to light the fire and bake the first bread of the day. Jack came whistling down the stairs after her and went straight out of the house, stealing an apple from the barrel and munching on it as he left.

‘I’ll be back in time for supper,’ he threw over his shoulder. ‘Well, most likely.’

Laying out fresh logs and kindling on the hearth, Lucy stiffened at the tiny fluttering sensation under her apron. She had felt it a few times now, and knew it must be the baby kicking.

Hesitant, she straightened and laid a hand on the top of her hard belly. She felt the fluttering again.

‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘Hush, little one.’

It felt strange, talking to an invisible being who was not even in existence yet. Yet she felt sure her own mother must have done the same when Lucy herself was in the womb, for it felt like the natural thing to do.

She looked up with a start to find Jack’s stout mother, Mistress Parker, watching her from the doorway. The woman’s face was tight with disapproval under her wife’s cap.

Mistress Parker swept forward and folded her arms across her plain bodice, shaking her head at the cold hearth. ‘Not lit the fire yet? Am I to do everything for you? When Jack said he was bringing home a wife, I thought my work would be lessened. But you’re always sitting down and daydreaming instead of doing your chores. And now you’re talking to yourself. It seems to me you’re as much of a good-for-nothing slattern as any of the whores up at the theatre. Now, look sharp and make dough for Master Parker’s nuncheon!’

She shoved Lucy towards the table. ‘When you’ve done that, you can help me with the washing.’

‘Yes, mother,’ Lucy said, docilely enough, and stood to measure out the flour, yeast and water for that day’s bread.

As soon as Mistress Parker had bustled outside to complain loudly about her new daughter to a passing neighbour, Lucy sat down and slipped off her wooden clogs, rubbing her swollen feet and ankles. She found it hard, carrying a baby, though she knew that once the child was born she would be less unhappy. It was not that she didn’t want the child. It was just that she felt so large and cumbersome, and her new clumsiness was becoming noticeable, with chairs knocked over and bowls accidentally smashed. She was forever needing to relieve herself too, so that walking down to the marketplace was a severe trial, especially when Mistress Parker stopped every few yards to discuss her with another crowd of strangers, explaining how her son had brought home an ugly black-skinned wife with a child already heavy in her belly. ‘But what is one to do when Jack is so lusty and virile?’ she would ask, mock-piteously, barely able to conceal her delight that her son had finally proved his manhood by siring a child.

The delighted shock and curiosity with which the Parkers’ neighbours stared at her left Lucy feeling sick, and even more like a breeding sow than ever.

Before Mistress Parker could catch her sitting, Lucy wearily stood up and went back to rolling and kneading the day’s dough.

It seemed like another age when she had danced before the court, so light on her feet that visiting lords and ambassadors had gasped to see her volta and gavotte, and the Queen herself had rewarded her with jewels and gifts of rich gowns for her performances.

She was growing more rotund and slower-moving with every week that passed, anchored to the ground by the child in her belly. Though she no longer wished to dance. Indeed, she was content to sit still, for she soon became breathless when forced to climb stairs or walk to the market with her shopping basket, or even mend linen besides the Parkers’ smoky hearth in the evenings.

And all because she had been fool enough to fall in love with Will Shakespeare.

‘That’s enough, you stupid girl!’ Mistress Parker exclaimed,
pinching
her arm so hard that Lucy yelped. ‘You’ll over-knead it if you carry on. Cover the dough with a damp muslin and put it aside now, down by the hearth. Then we’ve to wash the household linen before it walks off down the street on its own. You must make fresh soap for a washing ball, for we’ve only enough left for one more washday. Then you’re to clean the sheets and coverings, and hang them out from the windows to dry. I’ll tend to Jack’s shirts myself. They need a delicate touch.’

Lucy swallowed her resentment and dampened a thin scrap of muslin to cover the dough while it rose. Making soap, then washing the bedsheets and other linen, those were the harder tasks, yes. But at least it would ease her thoughts of Will to be working so diligently.

‘Yes, mother.’

She set about making the washing ball, an arduous process involving ash and animal fat that took several hours of mixing and boiling in a vat. Then she fetched two buckets of water from the river and began layering the household linen inside the washtub as carefully as she knew how, while Mistress Parker stood over her, arms folded, inhaling sharply through her nose.

‘Not so tight, not so tight,’ she muttered at one point. ‘The soap cannot reach every part if you cram them all in together like that, higgledy-piggledy, nor will the dirty water have a chance to drain away properly afterwards.’ She tutted, bending to show Lucy the correct way to lay the linen round the edges. ‘Merciful heavens, child, did your mother never teach you how to pack a washtub?’

‘My mother died when I was born,’ Lucy replied shortly, fetching the first bucket. ‘She taught me nothing except how to breathe.’

Mistress Parker looked at her, shaking her head. ‘Well,’ she sniffed, turning away as Lucy poured water into the tub. ‘It will do.’

Leaving the linen to soak near the fire, Lucy took up the twiggy broom and swept the dead leaves, soiled rushes and other debris into the street. It was a task she performed at least once a week, for Mistress Parker insisted on keeping a clean house. It was late November and the air was chill, though with the sweat on her forehead she barely felt the cold.

Looking up with an aching back, Lucy saw a cloaked man with a feathered cap standing in the doorway of one of the houses across
the
street. He appeared to be watching her, his gaze intent under bushy eyebrows. Lucy stared back at him, suddenly remembering that she had passed the same man on the corner yesterday, coming back from the marketplace. Bearded and with a scar below his right eye, he had been smoking a pipe while his gaze wandered along the narrow row of houses. The house in whose doorway he was now sheltering stood empty; the occupants having left for the country a few weeks back. So what was his business there, and why was he watching the Parkers’ home?